Planting Liberally

FireDogLake today is keeping up the drumbeat for the Employee Free Choice Act, and I say, bravo. The post is about how much employers spend on union-busting tactics. Billions sounds like a lot of money spent on the union-busting industry (politely called the "employment law industry" in some circles), and I think that might actually be a bit of an exaggeration. I don't have concrete numbers on me, but I recall hearing a number somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million recently. One thing is for certain: employers are spending a lot of money on union-busting. Another thing is for certain: union-busting is not good for the bottom line. Ask Costco employees, who get good benefits and pay, turnover infrequently, and reward their company with healthy profit margins. Or Wal-Mart, which recently beat a hasty retreat from the lucrative New York City market because of public pressure resulting from its own union-busting tactics. Or Kaiser Permanente, the big success story in SEIU's health care organizing history, which is growing nicely together with the union. The list goes on. In other words, employers are spending a lot of money to ward off a "threat" which might not actually be a threat. I am curious as to why that is. In some cases, I'm sure, it's the result of deep prejudices on the part of the employer, and sometimes there's only so much you can do about an irrationally anti-union manager. But management is not always stupid, and in many cases, expensive and occasionally embarrassing union-busting campaigns must be justified. My guess is that in those cases, management has at least a handful of reports and studies which claim that unionization will destroy the company. However, it's nearly impossible to predict the future, and any report which makes such claims is almost certainly suspect. In any case, it is likely to be refutable. In this situation is, I think, an opportunity for a clever liberal entrepreneur. Such an entrepreneur could make a business out of studying the likely outcomes of unionization for an employer, with a bias towards taking into account the various benefits of unionization - better morale, lower turnover, etc. Another entrepreneur could do quite well creating an employment law firm which isn't hell-bent on union-busting, but is rather geared towards helping an employer work together with a bargaining unit (or bargaining committee, if the election has not yet been held) for mutual benefit. The obvious question for these entrepreneurs is: how will they get clients? What kind of business will hire a consultant who is likely to issue pro-union reports? It's a good question, and I can't say I have the answer. It is noteworthy, though, that Kaiser Permanente is now a "reference" for SEIU, and the CEO regularly encourages his peers to work together with SEIU. It's not hard to imagine good results breeding future success in the same way for these hypothetical pro-labor union relation firms. In some ways, these ideas are just the complement of Andy Stern's arguments, that unions must work together with their employers to enhance their bottom lines. If unionization is mutually beneficial to employer and employee, surely we can make that case convincingly to management?